Changing Door Hinges

Written by Dave Grutter

The cause of this problem is a worn out bottom door hinge. The
bushings or whatever in the hinge are shot. We're lucky that Nissan designed bolted-on
hinges rather than welded-on. A hinge cost me $34 and change, inc tax, at the dealer. [Editorial
note: They cost about $25/per from Brown & Brown
Nissan].

My brother-in-law is ex-GM auto body tech, so he and his tools came
in handy. First, we unscrewed and unclipped enough fasteners from the wheel-well liner to
peel it back over the tire. Then unscrewed three fasteners from the bottom of the fender
panel (one you have to get at w/door open).This way we could hold the fender out of our
way a few inches w/a block of wood. Make sure door is closed now. Old hinge comes out
pretty easily. Chisel off as much as you can of the seam seal stuff. After we mounted the
new hinge we screwed the fender back, but it took a few small adjustments of screws to
line it up. The hardest work about this part is scraping away the seam-seal stuff.

This is where it becomes useful to have an auto body guy around.
There's a 'tweaking' tool they have that's like a steel bar with cutouts on one end and a
sliding gadget w/plastic blocks for padding. The cutout end hooks onto the 'catch' on the
door frame, and the sliding gadget hooks into the 'latch' opening in the door. They pull
up on the bar and it realigns the door. It makes a hell of a creaking, twisting noise, but
after three good adjustments the door is good as new. I won't be reapplying seam seal but
I probably will spray the hinge and around it w/some black primer.

The beauty of the 'tweaking tool' is that it does all the work. It
provides all the force and leverage. You can tighten all the bolts right up, then align
the door. No need to quickly tighten the bolts after aligning. Without the tool, by trial
and error, youll be aligning the door then final-tightening the bolts. You would want to
make sure the door-side bolts are tight before alignment, leaving the 'play' in the
frame-side bolts.

I think the best 'trial and error' method would be to positon the
car so that a floor-jack could be used to align the door. You wouldn't want the jack to be
exerting force directly to the bottom 'edge' of the door sheet metal, though.

I would recommend the tool, even if you had to mount and tighten the
new hinge yourself, then stop by a local neighborhood bodyshop afterward, and offer them a
few bux for the use of theirs!

Comments by Ronald S. Chong

I just tried the floor jack method that Dave Grutter (above)
suggested as a possible alternative to using that special alignment tool. It worked flawlessly.
Here's what I did:

installed the new hinge with the bolts loosely screwed in

opened the door and rested the b-pillar end of the door on a floor
jack (of course, use some cardboard or a piece of wood to protect the door). I left it
ajar just enough so that I could eyeball the alignment of the latch on the b-pillar to the
lock on the door.

jacked the door up so that I was a touch (1/8" to 1/4")
higher than the latch.